The concerns of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) regarding the enhancement of African peacekeeping have centred, since 1996, around a proliferation of foreign capacity-building initiatives. In October 1997, for example, the OAU Secretary-General reported to the Central Organ that "… the need for Africa to be prepared to take some degree of responsibility in peacekeeping is even greater today than ever before." He added that "this feeling is primarily based on initiatives that have continued to emerge, all aimed at assisting Africa in the area of peacekeeping."

Since 1998, however, there have been some remarkable developments on the African continent that call for a different point of departure when analysing the future of African peacekeeping. Not least among these was the staging of democratic elections in Nigeria in August 1998, an event which, among others, brought Africa’s largest contributor of international and regional peacekeepers renewed international respect and engagement. Indeed, by the end of 2000, Nigeria was the largest UN troop contributor, and the United States (which had hitherto excluded the country from its peacekeeping training programme) engaged in training support for several battalions of Nigerian peacekeepers.

The latter were intended for deployment to Sierra Leone, where the UN Assistance Mission to Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) took over the peacekeeping responsibilities from the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) monitoring group (ECOMOG) in October 1999, signalling perhaps the end of UN disengagement from peacekeeping responsibilities in Africa. UNAMSIL is now the largest UN peacekeeping operation in the world, and its establishment was followed closely by a UN Security Council resolution, in November 1999, authorising the establishment of a UN peace mission (MONUC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Finally, the UN again became involved in a ‘classical’ peacekeeping role with the establishment on 15 September 2000 of its mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE). Together, these three missions have a total authorised strength of about 23 000 military personnel — more than half of the figure for all 15 UN missions currently deployed throughout the world.

Although ostensibly informed and influenced by events surrounding the hapless UNAMSIL, the Report of the UN Panel on Peace Operations, or the Brahimi report, released on 23 August 2000, did little to address the dilemmas of UN forces that are confronted with armed aggression. Indeed, the basic and unambiguous message of the Brahimi report is that the UN today cannot perform the principal mission for which it was created - maintaining peace. The 60 recommendations contained in the report deal primarily with the concept of rapid deployment and the ability of the Security Council to act immediately to stem a crisis before the situation deteriorates. Specific recommendations include increased logistics support, more permanent headquarter support, improved communication, and a cache of discretionary funding.

Taken together, the comprehensive package of financial and organisational reforms contained in the recommendations of the Brahimi report hold the promise of dramatically improving the way the UN conducts those peacekeeping operations where parties consent to and abide by the rules of the mission. In so far as African countries continue to contribute to these types of missions, it is important to take cognisance of the positive implications of the Brahimi report, and to note the progress made with implementation.

The General Assembly’s Millennium Summit declaration merely ‘took note’ of the Brahimi report, suggesting serious reservations among some of the members. Some developing countries fear that the industrialised world is seeking, through the Brahimi recommendations, to impose a new peacekeeping order on them. On the other hand, discussions in the Security Council, at only its second Summit at the level of leaders on 7 September 2000, made clear that the urgency of improvements was vital to the body’s credibility. On the same day, the Permanent Five Members of the Council agreed to work together to achieve such improvements.

While UN members have not reached consensus on all of the panel’s recommendations, the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations has endorsed a number of recommendations dealing with, among others, rapid deployment; funding of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration; enhanced mission leadership selection; and staffing at the UN Secretariat. Further negotiations on implementation were set to resume in the Special Committee in June, and to continue until 27 July 2001.

The challenge for the 25 OAU members that are currently contributors to UN missions, as well as potential future contributors, is not to resist a qualitative improvement in the standard of UN peacekeepers. This could lead to greater mission effectiveness and a reduction in military and civilian casualties. It is important to keep track of the evolving evaluation standards, and to adjust national and regional training programmes to meet these standards.

However, there is more to the debate than the issue of African participation in and leadership of international peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the UN. What about African efforts to launch, lead and sustain their own peacekeeping interventions under the auspices of the OAU or one of the ‘subordinate’ subregional organisations (with varying degrees of direct or indirect assistance from and co-operation with the UN and other elements of the ‘international community’)?

The Brahimi report does not venture beyond the improvement of consensual peacekeeping operations in fairly benign security situations. As these are the least likely peace support environments to be encountered Africa (the mission in Ethiopia/Eritrea being the obvious contemporary exception), Africans should be aware not only of the dynamics of implementing Brahimi, but also of the limitations of and omissions in the report. For example, while recognising the need to assist poorer countries with the requisite logistic and training support for participation in UN peacekeeping operations, the panel did not address the inability of African countries to provide a credible multinational deterrent or enforcement capacity. In fact, the whole issue of regionalism gets a mere paragraph in the 70-page report. Brahimi simply confirms the fact that "the United Nations does not wage war" and that "where enforcement action is required, it has consistently been entrusted to coalitions of willing states, with the authorisation of the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter."

Over the past decade, Africa has witnessed a number of extremely forceful multilateral military interventions under the auspices of ECOWAS and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). However, the experiences of ECOWAS and SADC (and indeed the Commonwealth of Independent States in the territory of the former Soviet Union) have not really impacted on western-dominated thinking about the ‘division of labour’ between the UN and regional organisations for the maintenance of peace and security. Much of the thought on the roles of regional organisations in maintaining international peace and security is (wrongly) informed by the multinational peace support interventions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and its partners in the Balkans.

The NATO-led missions in Bosnia and Kosovo have reinforced the view that robust peace operations are best carried out by ‘coalitions of like-minded nations’, through the application of military technology and overwhelming force under a UN fig-leaf if one can be found, but without it if it cannot. Such options are not universally available, and regions such as Africa will have to rely on a much ‘leaner’ intervention formula. An intervention doctrine developed by the US and its NATO allies is not likely to provide good guidance to regional coalitions such as ECOMOG.

Nor, on the other hand, is the incremental adaptation of the failed peacekeeping formula (as in Brahimi) likely to enhance the chances of future success. The Brahimi report was obviously sensitive to the threshold of ‘international’ political acceptability, which must partly explain some of its glaring omissions. The general thrust of its recommendations is focused on the UN’s comfort zone, where many of these issues have already been generically explored as previous lessons learned. Yet, the report, in its treatment of doctrine and strategy, clearly envisages that regional organisations will remain the vehicle of choice for peace operations in non-benign security environments — such as those encountered in most complex emergencies in Africa.

If enforcement action, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, continues to remain the exclusive preserve of ‘coalitions of the willing’ or regional organisations, then the OAU and its subregional organisations will have to develop their own guidelines for such operations. This may require moving well beyond the UN comfort zone. Surely, the notion of ‘comfort’ is inappropriate in the midst of the abject human misery created by contemporary conflicts in Africa?